Shadows and <3: mammas fötter

Shadows fascinate me — in painting, in space, and in thought. They are not simply absence, but a form shaped by light.

Pliny tells us that the origin of painting was a woman who traced her lover’s shadow on the wall before he left (for war). She did it to hold on to him, knowing he could not stay. Reading this, I realized I had done the same. When my mother was in the hospital, I traced the outline of her feet while she slept. I wanted to hold on. The marks remained. My love remained. She did not.

A shadow is presence shaped by what we can’t see. Grief is the recognition of that absence; some say it is actually love without a home. It does not erase what was; it reminds us that something mattered.

Casati writes that too much light flattens the world. It is contrast that gives form. The same is true of love. Its depth is visible only because it can vanish.

Yet absence is not only loss. It also opens space. Sometimes, a spark appears — a song, a sudden encounter, the rhythm of the ocean — showing that presence continues even where something else is gone.

One night, standing with my feet in the ocean looking out on a black Libyan Sea under a bright moon, I felt how darkness is not emptiness but depth. Shadows are not nothing; they mark form even when it is hidden. Absence is vast, yet within it, sparks and small beginnings already exist — moments, memories, sudden shifts that continue quietly. Even in the midst of what is gone, these presences insist we notice them and are not blinded by absence.